Nintendo seem to think that air drumming is a good idea. After all, it was the highlight of their Wii Music presentation last week. Harmonix, though, Harmonix beg to differ. And we like to think Harmonix know a thing or two about music games. Company boss Alex Rigopulos:

...in the early days of the Wii when it was first announced, we contemplated using the Wiimote for a drumming interface. We backed away from it because we found that the tactile element of actually hitting a surface when you're drumming is a fairly critical part to the visceral feel of actually playing drums. So when you're air drumming, it was a critical element you're missing in the experience. So that's one of the reasons we backed away from it and decided to build a custom drum peripheral.